


The Permanent Efficacy of Grace

by JeanLuciferGohard



Category: Gideon the Ninth - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: 8th house: we do eugenics and eschatology, Canon-Typical Violence, Family Angst, Gen, Pre-Canon, gtn2019exchange, the inherent tragedy of a child pope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2019-12-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:08:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22023856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JeanLuciferGohard/pseuds/JeanLuciferGohard
Summary: One Flesh, One End, two men, the eschatological signficance of reflection, and the sad, lonely duty of it all.or:Colum Asht respected the child. Sometimes he can't stand the Man.
Relationships: Colum Asht & Silas Octakiseron
Comments: 10
Kudos: 59





	The Permanent Efficacy of Grace

**Author's Note:**

  * For [venndaai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/venndaai/gifts).



**I. The things that make me weak and strange get engineered away**

Colum Asht presses his palm to the access panel, and leans in, exhaling across the glass. His breath fogs the surface for a single instant, then fades, and the door opens with a soft, whirring hum.

This means that Brother Asht’s soul is still counted among the redeemed, that the Brother-Templar’s quarters are as cold as ever, and that the genetic similarity between himself and his necromancer is holding stable within acceptable parameters. It’ll spare him a visit to the Brother-Geneticists, if nothing else; the immuno-suppressants give him brutal dry-mouth, and he’s running out of molars. 

He steps inside.

The cell is neat, and spare, like all their cells are neat, and spare, pale wooden floor varnished to an antiseptic gleam, ceiling high and vaulted. Candles as white and thick as calf bones lining the recesses in the walls, unlit, in favour of watery track-lighting hidden behind them, hurling their barred shadows up against the walls. The Tome, on its pedestal, open. Heaps of blankets to ward off the chill, more and finer than Colum has.

There’s almost nothing to suggest that they’re a child’s rooms; a pair of slippers not yet put away, maybe, or the miniscule scale of the desk. 

“You asked to see me, Brother Templar?”

The Heir of the Eighth House is ten to Colum’s twenty-four, a blanket cast over his skinny shoulders and bunched up around his elbows. He starts, clearing his throat with a thin, piping cough. He has spent every day of the past month ripping Colum’s soul out of his body, and shoving it back.

“Col—Brother Asht,” he murmurs, lifting his tiny chin halfway through, remembering himself. He gestures, and the motion is too old for his hand. “Will you sit?”

He will. Colum settles himself gingerly at the edge of the bed and waits, palms rasping against his knees. 

Silas presses his lips together. He looks at Colum. Looks down. Looks at the Tome, which is bigger than his ten-year old chest, and then down, gaze skittering everywhere, afraid to land on anything, and finally, in a rush, he says:

“The Tome, it—Our Lord says—the book says a siphoner should be cuffed, and I—does that mean it’s wrong?”

And shrinks inside his blanket-mantle, huddling against the window.

Colum knows what they say about the cavaliers of the Eighth. What they say is that these are batteries, not men, and the less they know, the better, and why should anyone want to know what a battery thinks about how it’s used?

“What,” Colum hears himself croak, “Does the Master Templar say?”

“He says not to worry. And he showed his me cuff, but it wasn’t, it was just a bracelet, and no—nobody tells me if they don’t know something except you.”

Colum wants to hate him, sometimes, the boy—a _child_ , still scared of the dark, he still keeps his lights on at night, for _fuck’s sa—_ to whom his entire existence is forfeit, a want so fierce it chokes him, and he wakes, gagging and clammy with sweat, twisting on his cot in the middle of the night. He wants to.

But Brother Asht is not, by nature, a hateful man. They didn’t make him that way.

Backlit against the window, the cornsilk fall of Silas’s hair is a wild halo around his face, torn free of his braid, and Colum hates the idea of him, but in the flesh, he is a boy, dwarfed by the room and the Tome, a boy luminous with fear, and Silas is trembling, and Colum Asht is not, by nature, a hateful man. He opens his arms.

“Come here.”

He settles Silas against his knees, kneeling in front of him on the mattress. Colum tips the boy’s head forward, smoothes back the truant locks of hair one by one. That is how they made him, attentive to detail, to need.

“I think...we can’t always know whether a thing is right, or not. We have to trust—”

“I already _know_ the nature of faith, Brother,” Silas pouts, fidgeting.

Colum snorts.

“Of course you do. My mistake.” He sections out his uncle’s hair, jaw working slowly back and forth. “Then I think sometimes, you have to make a choice, and hold to it, right or wrong.”

Colum Asht is, by nature, what the Brother-Geneticists made him to be; testosterone levels elevated, relative to the donor sample, to increase muscle mass; additional hormone therapy to offset aggression; reduced pain sensitivity, bigger lungs; bigger veins, to make the injections easier, not that the Brother-Physician has needed to inject Colum for years now. He does it himself, jabbing needles into the meat of his thigh with the regularity of a man going to prayer. 

Brother Asht was made a loyal man, a choke-chain of amino acids spelling out his obedience. But he is choosing—is trying to choose, to be a good one. This is what the cavaliers of the Eighth say among themselves: I have my sword. I have my honor. I have served, and I will be of service. I keep what remains to me, even as I am not my own.

This is what a good man would do, a good man would comfort a child. A good man would not be angry. Colum braids, careful not to pull.

“Where do you go? When I...” 

Silas’s fingers twist in his lap.

“I go to the River.”

There is a silence, and then:

“Does it hurt?”

“...Yes. Brother Templar. It hurts.”

“You only call me that when you’re angry about something. Are you angry at me?”

The Brother-Geneticists forgot, Colum thinks, to make him a forgiving man, which was an oversight on their part.

He sighs.

“No, Si, I’m not angry at you.”

Silas tugs against Colum’s hold on his hair, and wriggles halfway to face him, little face screwed up suspiciously.

“Do you forgive me?”

He is trying to be a good man.

“You’re going to be the Master Templar, Si,” he says, finally, tying off the end of the braid. “You’re the one who’s in charge of forgiveness, not me.”

* * *

**II. You and me and the war of the end times**

The Brother-Immunologist stops him as Silas mounts the Spire. He is thirteen. The Brother-Immunologists’s hands are powdery with nitrile, and shockingly warm against his arm. 

“You understand, of course,” she says, canting her severe, hawkish face to one side, “that should something _happen_ , your claim as Heir will necessarily be delayed until such time as another cavalier can be procured.”

What the Brother-Immunologist means is: _If you kill him_. What she means is: it is nearly the height of winter, silica flats spiked with frost, the light thin and pale, and with a barrier constructed only of Silas’ own reserves of thanergy, they will both die of exposure in a little under an hour. The Brother-Immunologist means that siphoning too much from his cavalier, to make up the deficit, will strand Brother Asht’s soul at the River. She means that if Brother Asht does not have enough to give, if Silas cannot control what he calls into his cavalier’s body, they will both die anyway.

Nobody, not since St. Titus, and Antia Votte who served him, has withstood the Trial of the Spire longer than a day. Silas purses his lips.

“Brother Asht will not fail.”

“No, of course not!” She drawls, withdrawing into her flawlessly white sleeves. Her hairline has the look of a derelict seawall, a jagged line only just holding back her thunderously black hair. “I see no reason he should, my son. But it behooves us to bear the practicalities in mind. I pray our Lord’s blessing on your trial, Octakiseron. May God smile on the Heir.”

She bows.

The Spire looms precipitously over the Monastery of the White Glass, pinning it to the high desert cliffs like a martyr arrayed for dissection. It is only just large enough to hold two people, both kneeling, ringed by a viewing gallery where the Brother-Immunologist waits among the assembled Templars of the Glass.

Silas mounts the Spire. The wind claws at his braid.

Brother Asht’s attitude is one of prayer, kneeling on the flagstones with his head bowed, and his sword perfectly horizontal across his thighs, and the wind is so cold that Silas can barely breathe, let alone speak, but he says:

“Ready, Brother Colum.”

And Brother Asht unlocks his fingers from his sword and says:

“Ready, Brother Silas.”

And Silas sees: 

Brother Asht’s face goes still, then pale, then grey, but his eyes are open almost until the very end, even against the wind, slowly clouding over while the rest of him bleaches like bone in the sun—

And Colum sees:

The River, and it always happens all at once, that he’s there, and then _here_ , and Colum looks out across the banks, and he does not apprehend the geography. It’s farther than Silas has ever sent him before, but he sets his face to the light, and turns, and walks—

—And Silas gasps, and the noise is lost almost as soon as it’s punched out of his chest, but suddenly he is _warm,_ and the wind is quiet, and it doesn’t even hurt to kneel, and Silas is warm, radiant, and there is light spilling out of him everywhere, as clear and perfect as an insect’s wing in sunlight, and it would be so easy, so simple, to go on like this forever, sending Brother Asht farther than anyone has ever gone, calling in more than anyone ever has, because they will not — _cannot_ fail, and Silas is perfect and serene in this knowledge, eyes hooded, smiling beatifically—

—and it doesn’t matter how long he walks—has been—will be walking, because Time doesn’t mean anything at The River, and everything looks the same, an exhausted horizon sagging blurrily in the distance, which is always exactly the same, no matter how far he goes, and this is why Colum strays, wavering _just_ too close to the milky water, and something flies from the water, and it grabs his ankle—

—Nobody, not since St. Titus, and Antia Votte who served him, has withstood the trial of The Spire longer than a day, and the last Master Templar stood for only three hours, and it’s been six already, more than enough; Col— _Brother Asht_ ’ _s_ eyelashes are frosted over, even through Silas’s barrier, and his eyelids shudder, and Silas squeezes his hands tighter, whispering, “Brother Asht, I bid you return—”

—Colum hits the dirt, flat on his back with the breath punched out of his chest and his jaw still buzzing where his teeth _clacked_ together, _hard_ when he fell, and as he looks up, Colum sees hunger. A Revenant Beast does not look _like_ anything, because it is not _like_ anything, it is only hungry, and there are parables, certainly, about what hunger must look like, for Our Lord did go among the nations of Tarsus IV, and much He saw there, but they did not build Brother Asht for parables, they built him for _this;_ Colum rolls, desperately, arm flying up to wedge his targe into the creature’s mouth just as it dives, toothy and gaping, to close over him—

—but Brother Asht does not return. He sways, and his fingers tremble against Silas’s, but he does not return. Shadows stretch across the Spire, and Brother Asht does not return, not even when Silas, biting his teenage lips bloody, lowers the barrier until he can feel the cold again, until the wind rips his hair from his braid, flying wildly around them while the color bleeds back into Colum’s face, and even then he does not return. Silas presses their foreheads together, one hand clasped to the back of his nephew’s neck, and he can barely manage to pull the bigger man down, Brother Asht is that rigid, and he whispers, intently, “I bid you _return,_ _—_ ”

The impact rattles through his arm, a bright, incandescent pain lacing through his shoulder as teeth scrape his shield, and it’s enough to keep his head on his shoulders, but as the Revenant Beast slavers and snarls, what passes for its tail, the whippy, lashing appendage that dragged him down in the first place, snakes up and out and then _into_ his side, spearing him in place. Colum screams, or thinks he screams, and it is all he can do to keep his shield up and scrabble for his sword—

“I bid you return—”

Colum is bleeding. Colum is closing his fingers on his sword, but the angle is wrong, and he can only grab it by the blade, which chews at the meat of his hand, slicing deep into his palm, his fingers, and he is bleeding, running over his arms and into his eyes as he thrusts, up, once, panting and thrashing and the blade of his greatsword is too wide, he cannot hold it like this without—so Colum grits his teeth and tightens his bloody hand around the blade, and twists, shearing through Revenant jaw and his own bone—

“I bid you return—”

Colum stands. He staggers, clutching his bleeding hand to his bleeding side. Colum pushes his sword into the dirt, leaning heavily against the pommel. He walks. He wakes—

Silas Octakiseron stands, while his cavalier kneels, and he holds the bigger man’s shoulder with one hand while the Brothers of the White Glass close a silver chain mail cuff over his slender wrist.

It has been nine hours.

* * *

**III. And mine eye shall not spare thee, nor will I have pity**

Silas watches the muscles bunch in his nephew’s shoulders as he works, polishing his targe to a mirror-bright gleam. Brother Asht has been polishing his targe for over an hour now, moving with the underwater lethargy of a man in a dream, the way he used to look after they’d changed his injection dose, shrinking away from the Brother-Immunologist like she might cut him open just by looking at him. 

They haven’t changed Brother Asht’s anything since Silas was fifteen. Brother Asht is constant. _Colum_ is a mathematical certainty. That the cavalier—that the _man_ should change—should _betray_ his _oath_ now—unthinkable. This is what they say about the cavaliers of the Eighth: these are batteries, not men.

This is what they say about the necromancers: what kind of person would _do that_ to somebody?

Silas fingers the edge of his chain cuff, curling his hand around the cool smoothness of it, knuckles raised to his mouth. Brother Asht is yet faithful. He must be. Silas lowers his hands.

“Brother Asht,” he ventures, “Do you require confession?”

“No, Silas.”

Brother Asht does not look up. His face is set, creased into a perfect stillness.

Silas’s fingers flinch at his sides, his face souring like milk. Something roils and clenches in the pit of his stomach.

“Brother Asht,” he repeats. “Do you _require confession_.”

Colum stands and crosses the room without a word.

A true confessional ought to have mirrored the floors as well, Silas thinks, and the ceilings. There should be no refuge, no space for a man to escape himself. The confessional adjoining their rooms has only the walls mirrored, and so it must be a test of faith for Brother Asht not to succumb to the temptation to look away. Silas watches himself pace to the center of the confessional, and waits.

Colum sighs, and his heavy shoulders slump, all of them, spanned across a thousand reflections. Many Brother Ashts bow their heads. They kneel, and intone, all together:

“I stand before the White Glass which sees all, and see in it myself,” low and resigned.

Silas, and the Silas behind him, and the Silas behind him, all tilt their narrow faces in acknowledgment.

“The Glass Sees,” they say.

Many Silases gesture.

“Brother Asht,” they say, “You may begin.”

Colum works his jaw back and forth, and he does not look away, but his eyes are shuttered like a derelict building. He clasps his hands before him, and is as remote and yellow as an ossified sun.

“I have known my uncle from birth,” he murmurs in his low rasp, dragged up from some interminable depth, “and I have had no small part in his raising. But I fear...”

He’s sounded like that Silas’s whole life, but he didn’t always. Lung infection. It scarred his larynx, and this was the voice that taught Silas to read. It is a test of faith to forget this. Mercy is not mercy if it lets a sickness spread. Silas schools his face into the glassy stillness which the Lord Undying requires of his rites, and in the mirror, another Silas schools his face, and many Silases fold their hands inside their robes so they will not reach out.

The Master Templars thin their lips into a harsh line. 

“Speak, Brother Asht.”

“I fear he is not a good man, Master Templar. I fear,” rasps Colum, “that this is my doing.”

Many Colums raise their heads. The lines of their faces settle into a blasphemously rueful twist. 

“I think, sometimes,” he whispers, “that I should have taken you when you were still a boy, and thrown the both of us from the Spire. And then I think it wouldn’t have made a difference. Lord knows they have spares of me, if not you.”

He bows his head.

Or he starts to, but a thin white hand catches him by the jaw. It tilts his chin up once more.

It is a long moment before Silas realizes that the hand is his own. That his wrist is bare. That the jaw fits into his palm in the same way that his own jaw fits into his palm, and that he can taste salt on the corner of his mouth. That his eyes are burning. That Colum does not strain against the hold in the slightest. He only looks up, eyes like a hole, a brown so deep and awful it might be black, and says:

“I pray the Glass That Sees will see my heart is true. I pray it bears my confession to Our God, who became Emperor. Our Emperor who became God. Are you going to absolve me now, Si?”

Hear now the words of Our King Undying:

What is common sand may yet become more than itself, but first must meet the fire. 

This is a motion Silas has had to practice, the twisting snap of arm and wrist that shakes his cuff free of his sleeve, and the Glass Sees him do it, and the Glass Sees many Master Templars reflected back and forth between the mirrored walls bring their hands down to the other side of Colum’s jaw.

The Glass Sees many Colums look up at the Master Templars, who are luminous, eyes alight with divine conviction, or tears, or both, and sees that while their mouths shape the sounds of:

“Please don’t,”

They are already raising their hands, hard-bitten palms curling gently around the Master Templars’ wrists.

The Glass Sees that the Master Templar does not weep, exactly, but that his expression is stricken, and hollow, his face dotted with tears he barely seems conscious of. The Glass Sees him look away.

Silas incandesces.

Colum recedes.

Silas’s breath fogs over the mirrors, choppy and too fast, faintly hysterical, and then fades, which means that Silas Octakiseron is yet counted among the redeemed.

Brother Asht barely breathes at all.

**Author's Note:**

> Hit ya bitch up on twitter @gin_n_chthonic, or tumblr @thefaustaesthetic


End file.
